Alone in a Strange Land

Gudrun Bjornsson had to sell all her possessions to move from
Iceland to Canada, but she saved one special symbol of the rugged
land of fire and ice she left behind.

Bjornsson brought to Canada an elaborate black dress that she
wore on her wedding day in 1890. The dress, called a
skautbuningur, is a formal costume still worn at festive
occasions in both Iceland and Canada. Today, residents of Icelandic
settlements on the Prairies still celebrate some of the island’s
ancient traditions.

Gudrun (Ulu) Jonsson of Regina, Saskatchewan became an active
member of the province’s Icelandic community after moving to Canada
in 1970. She said that the dress worn by Bjornsson is the most
formal of the three women’s national costumes in Iceland.

"The skautbuningur is the kind of costume that you would
wear now to a royal wedding," Jonsson remarked. "You would not see
common people dressed like that anymore."

Gudrun Bjornsson’s outfit consists of a two-piece dress made of
black wool, the traditional fabric and colour. Ornate patterns of
gold and silver thread, symbolizing glittering rays of sun, decorate
the sleeves and cuffs of the jacket. Bjornsson hand-embroidered the
floral pattern along the bottom of the skirt, the pattern represents
an Icelandic summer.

The skautbuningur was designed in the 1860s by Sigurdur
Gudmundsson, an Icelandic painter who wanted to revive the
popularity of traditional costumes and curb demand for continental
European fashions entering the country.

The most distinctive feature of the costume is probably its
elaborate head-dress.

"I would suspect it wasn’t very comfortable to wear," said
Jonsson. The linen cap and veil were held in place by a brass ring
worn on top of the head and further secured with hair pins. The
white veil is symbolic of the glaciers that cover over ten percent
of Iceland’s surface.

Though there are several Icelandic communities on the Canadian
prairies, most people know little of the island in the North
Atlantic. Iceland has a stark landscape that includes both glaciers
and volcanic deserts, and much of the island’s interior is
uninhabitable. Most of Iceland’s 270,000 residents trace their
origins to Viking settlers, and the Icelandic language is so similar
to Old Norse that children can read ancient Viking sagas with little
difficulty.

The use of patronymics instead of surnames is a longstanding
Icelandic tradition that has not survived on Canadian soil. Ninety
percent of Iceland’s population follows the ancient tradition where
a father's first name becomes the surname of his children, with the
words "son" or "dottir" added to the end.

"In the telephone book, you look people up by their first name,"
stated Ulu Jonsson, adding that a person's occupation is often
listed so they are easier to find. Jonsson said her own surname is
actually Gudbergsdottir, because women do not usually change their
names when they marry.

Icelandic settlement in Saskatchewan began about 1885, a decade
after the first settlement on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg. The
area north of Gimli, Manitoba was once called New Iceland, and the
territory had its own constitution and local government.

One of the largest Icelandic settlements in Saskatchewan was the
"lake district" that includes Elfros, Leslie and Foam Lake.

The lake district eventually became home to Gudrun Bjornsson.
Bjornsson’s husband died after seven years of marriage and she moved
to Canada with her three young daughters in 1900. Bjornsson's
granddaughter, Imba Fedorowich, said her grandmother only decided to
leave Iceland because her brother convinced her to go with him.

"Right before they were going to leave, her father and brother
changed their minds," said Fedorowich. She says her grandmother had
no choice but to leave because she had sold almost everything she
owned.

Bjornsson arrived in Canada and helped look after a farm north of
Gimli.

"She went out to get the cows and she never came back," said
Fedorowich. "They never knew what happened to her." Bjornsson and
her two remaining daughters started a farm at Icelandic River.

When she got older, Bjornsson spent many years with her youngest
daughter’s family in Wynyard, Saskatchewan. She kept the black dress
and other small items from her homeland with her until her death in
1945. Imba Fedorowich said she decided to donate her grandmother's
costume to the Western Development Museum at Yorkton in 1976 because
it offered a small piece of Iceland's history.

In Canada, Icelandic history is still celebrated in places like
Gimli, where the original New Iceland territory was settled in the
1800s. Each year, a woman from the community wears the
skautbuningur costume when she is honoured as the Fjallkona,
the Maid of the Mountain.

Museum Gold: Treasures from the Collection

This
article was originally published as part of a newspaper articles written
by Noelle Grosse in celebration of the Western Development Museum's 50th
anniversary in 1999. The articles appeared as regular features over the
course of late 1998 and 1999 in the Saskatoon Sun,Yorkton This Week
and Enterprise, and as intermittent features in the Regina
Sun. In 2001, all 65 articles were gathered into a publication -
Museum Gold: Treasures from the Collection.